One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a figure in the distance. As he got closer he realized the figure was that of a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy he asked, "What are you doing?" The youth replied, "Throwing starfish into the ocean. The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die.""Son," the man said, "Don't you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can't possibly make a difference." After listening politely the boy bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the surf.Then smiling at the man he said, "I made a difference for that one."

I saw this story on a blog about adoption. This story answers the question "Why adopt?"
I have been asked this question so many times it astounds me.

Beautiful story and with the statistics that I recently read about the estimated 143 million orphans in the world ; I think we all should say ," Why not adopt ?"
http://www.waitingchild.org/malea.html This is a link to a story about a family who adopted a special needs child with clubfoot (like Jude ) from China

-Anita